Our lovely son is turning 1 year on the 25th of February. He has been a very good baby with the exception that he was a terrible sleeper. We say “was” because after many months of compassionate sleep training – He seems to be sleeping better. However, it’s only been a few weeks. We’re sure some awful sleep regression is heading our way.

His bedtime used to be 9pm, and after reading every baby sleep book decided to try for the early bed time. We made it 8pm and then when the last time change occurred, we used it as an opportunity to make his bedtime 7pm. All the books said he’d probably sleep just as long, if not longer. Ha! Of course that was not our case. He just woke up earlier. So now that he is sleeping better he is averaging 10.5 hrs a night (It used to be 11 hrs with frequent night wakings). So we put him to bed at 7pm and he wakes at 5:30am. If we’re lucky we can get him to sleep until 6am. But not usually. We hate the 5am wake ups! They are the worst. We’d like to push his bedtime back to 8pm.

With the time change occurring in March we are thinking of keeping him on the same schedule. He’ll feel like its 7pm when we put him down at 8pm. Then *hopefully* he’ll sleep until 6:30am and if we’re lucky 7pm. In your opinion does this seem like a good idea?

You know what – there is a reason it’s been taking me FOREVER to respond to this question.

The universe works in mysterious ways.

The Imp is now going to bed at 7pm (that’s as late as he can stay up without having a stellar meltdown performance) and getting up at … you guessed it … 5.30 bloody AM.

And guess what my first thought is … Kirsty is onto something with the March time change.

Frankly, I don’t really have the energy or patience to make changes any other way.

I love an email that says “all the books said”. What the hell do books know? They never knew my son. Or at least the Imp had never read those books. I guess yours hasn’t either. This bedtime thing seems to be a juggling act. My considerations seem to be – how long can they survive in the afternoon/evening before having a major meltdown? And what time does this mean they are going to wake up in the morning? Seriously, if I could put the Imp to bed at 5pm and have him sleep through until 7am the next morning, I wouldn’t have a problem with that! I sure would get a lot done in the evenings.

I would say that if your son is waking up at 5.30am happy and ready to play and making it through the day ok without having tired- related meltdowns, then he’s getting enough sleep and that is his rhythm. Of course you can try puttin him to bed a little later and see if it helps, and by all means the time change may work in your favour.

But also be prepared for the scenario that it may not work. An interesting thing happened when we travelled half way around the world. I thought to myself: Wonderful! Since the Imp’s body clock will be messed with anyway, I’ll just put him to bed around 10pm each night and that way we can take him out to dinner with us each night and he’ll just sleep in each morning. It worked like that for a few nights, but as he adjusted to the local time, he seemed to NEED to go to bed around 7pm. So maybe it’s something to do with the daylight, the sunrise and sunset or whatever.

So just in case, you are still getting up at 5.30am next month, try and get earlier nights yourself, and maybe get a coffee maker that switches itself on in the mornings. Best of luck. I hope it works for you (and us!)

ok, so i just wrote the world’s longest post, published it and then somehow (don’t ask me, i’m tired) deleted it. i’m sorry. i’ll try to recreate my genius tomorrow. in the meantime if anyone has any super ideas how to retrieve a lost post from wordpress, i’m open to suggestions.

and if anyone subscribes to us on a feed and happens to be able to magically copy and paste the text of that deleted post (with the above title), i promise you many many years of sleep filled nights. nah, seriously, i will send you a copy of Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution for your efforts.

I have a confession to make. For the last few nights I have been using controlled crying techniques to get Loudboy to sleep a) in his own bed and b) through the night. Now I was against using CC when he was young, because I didn’t think it was a good idea with young babies (and I didn’t think it would work). But we got to the magic age of 15 months and rather than his sleep improving it was getting worse. Not only was he waking lots at night, he was refusing to go to sleep at all, despite the fact that he was sleeping in our bed and I was feeding him down. No, he was certain there was interesting stuff going on in the other room (probably involving telly and biscuits) and he was going to find out, even if he couldn’t stand up without falling over. Who needs sleep anyway? And when he was in bed with us he was kicking and squirming so no-one was getting much sleep. Changes needed to be made.

If there were one thing to change, I would have tried other methods first. In our case, we needed to alter several things at once: getting Loudboy to sleep in his cot rather than our bed, stopping night feeds (an increasing problem for all sorts of reasons) and (ideally) stopping night waking. Gradual changes would take weeks and would still upset us all. Drastic measures were needed.

We decided to try something different. I had been reading Toddler Taming by Christopher Green and his suggestion that CC could give us more sleep within a few nights was an extremely tempting one. My main objection to CC for babies was that if Loudboy cried during the day, I would find out what was wrong and deal with it, so why not at night? Dealing with a toddler, I discovered, is rather different. There are times during the day when I ignore his crying, usually when he is throwing a temper tantrum because he isn’t allowed to play with knives or chew the power lead to the laptop or other child-friendly activities. I can also tell the difference between angry and upset. So with great trepidation I re-read the relevant chapter, did our usual bedtime routine and then instead of feeding Loudboy to sleep (and preventing him from escaping), I put him in his cot, said goodnight and left. He was not impressed. I had pegged myself as a wuss, so I left him for only two minutes at the beginning, went back, cuddled him until he was quiet, and left again. It took just over half an hour of tears before he was asleep. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t upset crying, it was ‘Why am I in this ******* cot? Get me out! Getmeoutgetmeoutgetmeoutgetmeout nownownownownownownownownow!’

We’ve done this for about five days now and guess what? It worked! Loudboy now takes five minutes or less to get to sleep and the protest has reduced to ‘Great. The cot. I’m sure this is infringing my human rights. Get me out zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…’

Not only is he going to bed at a reasonable hour (and it’s an earlier bedtime than usual, which means we have some adult evening time again), he’s only waking briefly at about 11 and again at about 1 or 2. Each time, he settles himself in a few minutes. Then he goes through until about 7am, when we have a feed and a cuddle.

I always said I wouldn’t rule out anything when it came to sleep training and I’m glad I tried this method. Of course, he may have improved on his own. Many babies do at 15 months, but for us it was a good window to nudge him into better sleeping habits. The problem with sleep training is that it isn’t a permanent fix: when the next teeth come through or he gets another cold he’ll be waking up again. For now, we are actually getting some sleep.

My 9 month old daughter is going through a phase, yes the dreaded phase of waking up every half hour if I’m not in bed with her. She’s also gotten very picky about which boob she wants. We co-sleep which I really don’t want to change, and I don’t really mind the night nursing which she mainly sleeps though as do I. What’s killing me is that I put her to bed at 8:00, nurse her to sleep with few problems and then she wakes up usually by 8:45 and thinks her 8:00 sleep was a nap. She’s ready to rock and roll, sleeping is for the weak willed, just ask her. She’ll go back to sleep at 11:00 but by then I’m exhausted and cranky. The problem is that I leave for work at 6:00 am and need some grownup time between 8:00 pm and 10:00 pm when I come to bed. Is there some way to get her to resettle herself until I come to be at night or is it unrealistic to expect that I can still co-sleep and night nurse but only after I come to bed?

Oona ends her email with a big sigh (understandably) and I think I’m going to start my response with a big sigh too (understandably).

SIGH.

Oona, you sound like you already know what is going on here – it is a phase. A horrid phase, but yes a phase. Babies are always changing, so if they are doing something you don’t like just wait a few weeks, but the same goes if they are doing something you just love, also just wait a few weeks. You’ve also beautifully identified the issue to me. It’s not the co-sleeping, it’s not the night nursing, it’s the lack of adult time and space.

If you’re enjoying the co-sleeping and the nursing, I don’t see any reason to change that. Instead you might want to brainstorm how you can create a little time for yourself or time with your partner or whatever you need. Can you steal a bit of time in the lunch hour to do something for yourself? Or can you take a bit of time on weekends to do something you enjoy? I find even an hour to pop down to the farmers markets on a sunday with a coffee makes me a much saner person and mother than before i set out.

I’m not quite sure how you can reclaim that 8-10pm valued grownup time though right at the moment. I do know how precious it is though to eat dinner in peace, sloth in front of some bad tv, catch up with your partner or write your blog … I know that some people who co-sleep put their child in their cot or bed for the first part of the night and then take them into bed when they first wake up. However, if your daughter is waking after 45 minutes, then this may seem completely ludicrous. My only thought is to get her used to settling in her cot for a bit and maybe it would go better. But in all likelihood, the waking and getting up would persist and you would be getting nowhere fast. So may I suggest my favoured alternative…

The alternative is to hang on until it passes. And it will. 9 months is classic separation anxiety so it doesn’t surprise me that you daughter is clinging onto you for dear life at the moment. You are her world and she’s not letting go until she’s very very sure that you will be coming back. She may also want to maximise time with you if you are away from her during the day. None of this is bad, it’s just how it is at the moment. The Imp still goes through sessions of this periodically, but not nearly as bad as that 9 month episode.

I have one other practical thought amongst all the consolatary waffle. Maybe you could revisit her nap schedule during the day. Perhaps she’s not tired enough in the evening, or perhaps even too tired. I think at about 9 months the Imp went from 3 naps to 2 and there was a bit of transition involved in that. Just a thought.

Why will you not give yourself a chance to fall asleep? You cannot fall asleep if when I put you down in your cot, you immediately stand up holding onto the side. Is it because of developmental imperative – you cannot help but stand up? Your poor frustrated mother trying to catch you every second from slipping and smacking your head on the taps because you insist on standing up for the whole of bath time. And now this standing mission is translated to bedtime too. Please lie down and go to sleep. You used to go to sleep so nicely while feeding. You used to go to sleep with daddy rocking you. Now there is just standing. And with the standing comes the yelling.

I once heard of a mother putting her baby in his cot standing up. At least then, there was only one direction for him to go.

I’ve talked before about my attempts at sleep ‘training’, particularly using Gradual Retreat; which I still have a soft spot for, but am just too lazy to implement at the moment, hmm….

Anyway, I’m going with the method of least resistance and am laying down beside the buddha bubs until she arrives at the land of nod, then creeping away to leave her to it. And you know what?…..it seems to be working. I have managed to night wean her recently (you’ll get there swizzler!) and I’m sure that has helped. Knowing that if she wakes, she won’t be greeted with a soft, warm boob, has deterred her a little, I’m sure, but I also think that she’s just getting older and is maybe learning how to sleep.

This is not to say that we don’t have bad nights, those when she wakes several times, or even just once, but it lasts an hour, arrrrrrggghhhh. I’m just hoping that she remembers that sleep is a good thing, that we like sleep, that we want more of it!!!!

“But then, I began playing a patience game with myself which has served me well. Call it kooky, call it blasphemous, call it What Works: When I was at my wits end, feeling nearly violent with the need for Pitter to just go to sleep after forty minutes of chattering, tossing and turning, etc. in our bed, I pretended that Pitter was Divine. I asked myself, What if this baby right here was an incarnation of Buddah, or Jesus himself? What if you were entrusted with caring for a prophet or a saint in their early childhood? Would you be annoyed that they weren’t doing exactly what you wanted them to do every minute, or would you feel blessed to be their caretaker? Maybe you would feel embraced by love, patience, and joy in the job of caring for your divine charge.”

This tag is quite timely actually. The last few weeks I’ve been trying my best to baby proof our house. I still don’t like to leave the Imp alone too much because he really is trying to climb everything in sight at the moment, so often when I have a shower I take him into the bathroom and he plays with a few toys on the floor and laughs at himself in the mirror. I thought I’d totally baby proofed the bathroom, but this morning I discovered my stupid error – the toilet brush was being licked by you know who. Now I’d come to terms with him licking the wheels of his pram, but not this. Oh no!

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